


Of Freedom and Ice

by booklovertwilight, Coffee_Scribbles



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Amnesia, Ice Skating, M/M, Phichit is an overprotective best friend, Pygmalion, Sculpture, Yuuri Quit After Nationals AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-10
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-06-25 13:34:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15641784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/booklovertwilight/pseuds/booklovertwilight, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coffee_Scribbles/pseuds/Coffee_Scribbles
Summary: Yuuri is a Japanese-Greek ice sculptor living in Detroit whose world is turned upside down by one of his sculptures.Viktor is a wandering soul who Yuuri unknowingly gives a second chance at life.Otherwise known as, the Yuri!!! On Ice Pygmalion AU that literally nobody asked for.[In other news, I have a co-author on this one: the lovely and amazing SweetSuperScribbles!!! She's the best, and I'm sooooo happy to be working with her!!! Go check out the story she's got on here, and also check out her Tumblr (her handle is the same on there)!]Thanks guys, and enjoy!!!





	1. Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuuri looks for love in unexpected places. 
> 
> Meanwhile, Viktor is dead and very miffed about it.

“Uh, hi.” Should he be saying this aloud, or not? Aren’t you supposed to pray inside your head? He didn’t know. “I know I never ask for anything, but… I figured… It couldn’t hurt, y’know?”

Yuuri sighed and rubbed the back of his neck, rearranging the roses at the base of the altar. “I don’t know if you can do this… Heck, I don’t even know if you’re real. I just do this because it makes me feel more connected to Mom. She did always want me to find a boyfriend, and I figure, goddess of love, right?”

He paused, inhaling the thick scent of myrrh. “Anyway, um, if you could maybe… help me find someone? Maybe, uh… well I grew up skating and I do ice sculpture, so maybe a guy who likes ice…?”

“Ugh, what am I saying. This is stupid. Praying to Aphrodite to find me a boyfriend... I’m sorry.” Yuuri quickly finished burning his incense and left the room, intending to make some tea to calm his nerves.

Behind him, as he shut the door, a pale figure with dark frizzy hair leaned against the wall, toga draping elegantly over luscious curves. She took a small bite from one of the honey cakes and smirked, then hummed in a voice like scorpion grasses in a spring breeze, “This ought to be fun.”

* * *

A willow of a man walked down the flat suburban sidewalk, vaguely noting the passage of time by the shadows of objects and the position of the sun, if not by his own shadow or internal clock. It was mid-afternoon. Yuuri would be at home, working on a sculpture, because that was what he did every afternoon after making his offering to the gods.

Those offerings were the thing that had drawn Viktor to Yuuri in the first place. To a living mortal, incense was only a smell, but to those outside the mortal plane, it was more of a beacon, separate from the rest of the mortal world in every notable way. And now that the Greek scripture was widely regarded as myth, those beacons were made even more blatant by their rarity.

Viktor recalled the day he’d first seen Yuuri. After seeing the beacon that was Athena’s incense, and locating the source as a small altar in Yuuri’s backyard, he had watched Yuuri kneel for just long enough to offer a ritual prayer then return to his house. Viktor followed on Yuuri’s heels, ending up in a room which even Viktor could tell was cold. Yuuri’s breath came out in white clouds as he walked to a pegboard on the wall, picking up a sizable chisel and a mallet. Then as he walked back over, Viktor looked at the rest of the room. It was full of ice sculptures.

Most were around the height of a man, and in fact most _were_ men. Frequently elegantly posed and partially naked. A man in Rose’s _draw me like one of your French girls_ pose lay to the immediate left of Yuuri’s working space. Another leaned against an imaginary wall with one leg crossed loosely over the other and a strip of thick folded fabric draping over his outstretched arm and around his waist to cover the important part but little else. One on the far end, pushed out of the way, seemed to be a stylized self-portrait: Yuuri stood with his hair slicked back and chin up, crystalline hands poised over one hip, a thin half-skirt flaring out from the other. He wore a complex costume with crosshatching and mesh, and pant legs that flared over skating boots. It looked like a moment frozen in time. Viktor admired it for a moment, then he decided that the real thing was much more beautiful and decided to watch Yuuri instead. Untold by the portrait, Yuuri had silky black hair which fell messily across his face, blue half-rimmed glasses, and soft, tanned skin. His arms were thicker and his legs were thinner than in his statue portrait. But more important was that his muscular form in reality was well padded, a trait lacking in nearly all Yuuri’s statues. In Viktor’s personal opinion, nothing was more attractive than a man who got enough to eat. He could never say the same of himself, he thought as he twirled his long hair around his finger.

It had been many months since that first sight, and Viktor had been back to visit Yuuri multiple times, abandoning altogether his previous quest to circumnavigate the globe. It had been a kind of boring quest anyways: oceans are really not meant to be crossed on foot. They’re like a big blue desert, an expanse of nothing, an open heartless void. Even though Viktor didn’t need to eat or sleep, walking for years straight was mind-numbingly dull. At first he decided to count fish, then he figured out it was a pointless endeavor because he could never tell if he’d seen a particular one before, so he tried to find something else to do, but there wasn’t anything else, so he decided he would do the pointless thing anyway.

Yesterday, Viktor had seen Yuuri’s most recent sculpture while he was creating the vague shape from the ice block: yesterday it had looked like a giant and lumpy H, true form yet indescernible. It had still been fun to watch, though: Yuuri was very good with a chainsaw. Viktor hadn’t seen it yet today, but he was sure that whatever it was, it would look beautiful.

And Viktor was, of course, absolutely right. He walked through the door to Yuuri’s ice studio (not as in, he opened the door and walked through the doorway—spirits can’t physically interact with objects—as in, he walked immaterially through the closed door) and saw Yuuri with one of his smaller chisels, carving flutes into a column which held up tiered flat discs. He had shaved to perfect flatness the top surface of what Viktor saw was becoming a table, and carved one of the supporting pillars halfway into a dolphin.

He stayed and watched Yuuri sculpt, sitting on the ground—not because he got tired of standing, he didn’t get tired, but because it was a better vantage point—and apparently he got lost in thought, because the next time he looked up, Yuuri was gone and the studio lights were off, bathing Viktor in darkness.

* * *

Yuuri left his studio, rubbing at his goosebump-covered arms. He’d just finished the project he’d been working on for the past two days: an elegant buffet table for a wedding, designed to be lit from underneath for full effect. The table legs were dolphins supported by crashing waves, and attached at the ends of the tabletop were elegant dessert tiers. Carved into the center of the tabletop surface were the couple’s initials: J + T.

As Yuuri flopped down on his couch, his phone buzzed. It chimed once, twice, before he picked it up. He knew who it was. There was only one person who ever called him. "Hey Phichit."

"Yo, Yuuri! I got a great invitation for a party tonight. For anyone else I’d ask if they wanted to come, but given your propensity to say no, I’m just gonna tell you that you’re coming."

Yuuri sighed. He had given up on arguing with Phichit on these sorts of things, and besides, he had just finished a major project, so he didn’t have a good excuse. "When will you be here."

"6. No dress code, just don’t look like a mess, okay?"

"Yeah, sure. See you then." 

Yuuri sighed and hung up, setting his phone on the coffee table. 6pm; two hours from now. Enough time to get dressed, then fret about whether he’d forgotten something important for an hour and a half. Better get started.

* * *

Yuuri climbed out of Phichit’s car, straightening his vest in an a vain attempt to make himself think he looked presentable. He was anxious he was overdressed, he was anxious he wasn’t attractive enough to be wearing nice clothes or going to a nice venue, he was anxious he was going to do yet again what he always did, and spend the night being a wallflower, staring into space, anxious about hypothetical conversations he could never bring himself to start.

This place was actually on the nicer end of the places Phichit dragged him to, and that was saying something. Phichit was an amazing, esteemed photographer, mainly known for his collection of photos from his home country, Thailand. People invited him to fancy parties all the time, and all of them were amazing. This one in particular, though, blew the others out of the water. 

The room was massive, with a high arched ceiling lit by four huge chandeliers. There were golden light curtains hung along the walls in front of sheer drapery, and there were what looked to be real marble columns. The marble buffet tables had laurel branches carved into the edges, with thin elegant leaves that would look real if painted. Yuuri made a mental note to steal that design for possible future sculptures as he grabbed some fancy cheese and found a comfortable, high-backed chair near the A/C unit and a suitable distance out of the way, to hang out and be a wallflower in.

He must not have noticed when he sat down, but as Yuuri looked around he noticed there was another man sitting in another chair nearby. He looked notably Greek, with tan skin, tousled dark brown hair, an elegantly quaffed goatee, and blue-grey eyes that glinted in the light like blown glass. He wore a shirt that looked more like a robe, with simple white fabric layered elegantly. He was turned away from Yuuri, idly watching a conversation, but he was turned in such a way that he made it clear he would be happy to talk. 

Yuuri thought of Phichit, and the 20-minute lecture he got about not being a wallflower this time, and spoke up. "Hey."

The man turned slowly, as if he'd been expecting this. "Hello." As he turned towards Yuuri, the world seemed to collapse to just the two of them. The rest of the scene seemed suddenly irrelevant; background noise.

"So, um... are you an artist, or a friend?" 

"Both, and neither." The man waved a manicured hand, like it didn’t matter. "In a manner of speaking. What about you, sir?"

"Friend. I mean, I’m an artist, but not for this. I’m here with Phichit. Phichit Choulanont."

"The photographer?"

Yuuri nodded.

The man nodded absently in response, distracted by another thought. "What of you? What medium do you work in?"

"Oh, I’m a sculptor. Um, in ice. I do statues, tables, whatever... for weddings mostly."

"I see. Not a medium that lends itself well to display. Though, Mr. Choulanont could always take photographs and you could display those."

"He’s done that, actually." Had this man really not heard of Phichit’s series on his sculptures? What kind of a rock did he live under? Phichit was like, _the name_ in photography, and even his silly collaboration with Yuuri was very well known.

The man chuckled. "Then how are you not swarmed with adoring fans?"

"You’re assuming my sculptures are any good. For all you know, I suck horribly."

"You wouldn’t mention your clientelle if you quote-unquote 'sucked horribly', because you wouldn’t have any. Besides, nobody does ice sculpture if they’re not already a good sculptor in other media." The man smirked. "And actually, I have seen your sculpture before. You have a website, no?"

Yuuri did, in fact, have a website. It was simple and outdated but it did exist, and it showcased Phichit’s photos of his sculptures, as well as marketing his services. In practice, he didn’t need it very much - he worked with a contractor which got him gigs - but it was nice to have theoretically. "Yeah."

There was a silence, after that. The strange aura that the man gave off dissipated as he turned away from Yuuri once more, tentatively, still looking like he’d welcome additional conversation if it happened but not having much to say. Yuuri turned away as well, watching Phichit talking to some smartly-dressed Indian women who looked like they could be his sponsors, or potenital ones. He considered excusing himself to fetch more fancy cheese, but then thought better of it. He didn’t actually talk to people at one of these events frequently, and he should make the most of his one stroke of luck.

"I just realized I never got your name."

"Anthos," the man replied. "You’re Yuuri, correct?"

Yuuri nodded, slightly confused. How did he know? Oh right, website.

Yuuri tried talking once more, changing the subject. "Why are you here, talking to me? There are a lot more, more fun people to talk to." That was a shitty question to ask, because the last thing he wanted to happen was for the one person he’d ever mustered up the guts to talk to at one of these things to realize that he was, in fact, really kind of boring, and decide to leave. But it was on his mind so it came out.

"Why do you think that?" Anthos’s response was instantaneous, and the look on his face was perplexed, like he’d never heard something so stupid.

Yuuri did a bit of a self-deprecating chuckle. "Look around." He gestured vaguely at the rest of the room without looking away: Anthos’s captivating aura was back.

Seemingly inaffected by his own gravitas, he said, "I don’t see anything special. Other than you.”

Now it was Yuuri’s turn to look at Anthos like he was stupid. “What do you mean?"

"Look around. What do you see?"

Whatever hold Anthos had over the surrounding space lessened enough that Yuuri could look around, so he did, though he didn’t need to comment on the scene. "People? Having fun? Not being incredibly awkward?"

When Yuuri looked back, Anthos had glanced off, with an expression that said _hm._ When he looked back at Yuuri, his expression was decisive. "You know what I see? Extras. Background noise.”

"Background noise to what?"

"You." When Yuuri made a face at that, Anthos continued, speaking deliberately. "You think yourself an extra in your own play. But you know what? I think you’d make a great love interest."

Yuuri laughed. He wasn’t sure whether that was a flirt. "What are you, a writer?"

"In a manner of speaking. My plays are orchestrated along the strings of fate." Okay, that was probably not a flirt. Actually, that was just plain confusing.

"That’s... very poetic."

"I do appreciate poetry." Anthos stood immediately after he finished his sentence, nodding to Yuuri. Giving absolutely no hint as to where he was going or whether he would be back, he vanished into the crowd.

Yuuri blinked at himself. He tried to understand what had just happened, and failed for the rest of the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Symbolism notes:  
> "scorpion grasses" are another name for forget-me-nots, which mean "true love" or "memories" in flower language.


	2. Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuuri has a strange dream that inspires a new sculpture.

It was the silence that woke Yuuri up. It wasn’t the fact that it was loud, and it wasn’t the fact that it was usually more silent than this. It wasn’t because of any alarm or siren, and it certainly wasn’t because he’d gotten a full eight hours sleep. It was still dark outside the bedroom window. 

He simply felt like he needed to be awake, like there was something he needed to do.

He lifted his arms and stretched in slow circles, then knelt down and touched his toes, steadying his breathing and calming his mind. Silver locks fell around his face, so as he stood he pulled a hair-tie from his wrist and ponytailed it in a swift motion.

He padded to the door as the smell of winter frost filled his chest; a light scent of slight mint and crisp air. Twisting the frigid doorknob, he opened the door for the cold to invade his senses. He took another deep breath, comforted by the familiarity, and turned down the long hall. He began a slow jog, slowly speeding up, as he made his way along the paved floor. Somewhere in his mind, he thought he should be getting tired. Yuuri didn’t exercise that much. Yet his body was undeterred: his lungs didn’t catch fire, he didn’t taste blood.

It felt normal. 

His muscles did not strain as he slowed to a stop in front of the coldest door in the house. He pushed the hefty door open to be greeted by a thick-throated man of cold Russian blood standing at the side of a sheet of ice. His mere presence cried of hard work and earned victory. 

Yuuri gave the man a quick nod and glided past only to be stopped by a second figure, this one standing rod-straight as if strapped to a flagpole. He was dressed in an officer’s uniform, and he held out the letter as if it were an extension of his own being.

Yuuri plucked it from his hands and it seemed to open itself. The words seemed blurry, characters incomprehensible, but the message behind them was all too clear. Then the whole scene began to blur, the sting of tears flooding behind his eyes. A warm hand rested on his shoulder, squeezing once: a silent consolation. It wasn’t enough. 

Nothing could be enough.

Yuuri turned and pushed away, gliding for a second before his blades met dry land and he tumbled over forward.

A flurry of movement and sound followed, explosive like the bang of a firecracker, sharp and close-by. Yuuri’s hands scrambled for purchase only to find cold, damp sod. He stumbled and steadied himself, eyes frantically searching for anything familiar. The whole place stunk of sulfur, sweat, and mud. An involuntary shiver seized his body, forcing his grip to tighten on the wood of his rifle.

A different hand grasped his shoulder then: lighter and sharper in its movement, almost graceful. Yuuri whipped around to meet the young, bright, vicious eyes of a complete stranger who felt like a comrade. 

The young man said something to him that sounded between an assurance of victory and a battle cry, reloading his gun and taking two shots over the dirt wall before recoiling as red splattered from his shoulder. He bared his teeth as if the wound had personally offended him and continued to fire. The sound of firecrackers echoed again, ringing in his ears like a silver bell. He reloaded his own weapon, leered it over the foxhole’s edge, and took aim. But before he could fire, he spotted an enemy running through the brush at the side of their foxhole, running toward them. No one noticed the grenade in his hand, even as he discarded the pin. 

The harsh syllables of a foreign tongue spill from Yuuri’s lips as he leaps up from his squatting position, gesturing wildly to his comrades. The blond man freezes, expression torn between terror and rage before he is scooped up and tossed over the shoulder of a redhead girl. The man- the _boy_ struggles in her arms as she retreats.

He gives the girl a look like a promise to follow. They both know he’ll break it.

She nods anyway and salutes with her free arm.

The enemy nears. The grenade is thrown. It sits in the bottom of the foxhole.

For a moment everything is silent.

The other two, they won’t be far enough away to be out of the blast radius unless he does something. It’s the moment of decision; the moment of truth.

Briefly, he runs his fingers through a crew cut of short, choppy hair, and he wishes he could have died as he’d lived.

He cradles the grenade to his chest like a newborn child, and he waits.

He closes his eyes.

* * *

Yuuri woke up. He threw the blankets off, blinking at the blinding sunlight streaming in through the window. He sat on the edge of the bed and through harsh breathing oriented himself. He stood, lifting his arms and stretching in slow circles. Why were his muscles so unresponsive? He leaned over to touch his toes but could hardly reach the ground with his fingertips.

And then Yuuri realized why. 

He never stretched. That wasn’t him in his dream. 

Yuuri stood and blinked for a moment, recalling the last time he’d done these stretches. Years ago, when he’d last figure skated, before his disastrous failure at Nationals. What were those stretches again? Yuuri furrowed his brow and tried to remember anything other than slamming onto the ice out of another failed triple, tried to remember anything other than how the entire crowd had winced as one, turning to look away in shame, as if he wasn’t feeling enough already.

He used to do this warm-up daily back then, what was it? He started by leaning over to one side, then the other. Roll the ankles, roll the neck. Twist around to each side, grabbing his bedposts and stretching the sleep from the rest of his joints. 

He had to remind himself to breathe on more than one occasion. 

Yuuri wondered for a moment why he stopped doing this; if it were out of sheer laziness, or not wanting to remember. Either way, he felt now that the wound had closed long ago, and if the calm that slowly settled into his bones, the ease with which he now breathed, were to be a constant after he stretched each morning, he’d have to do it more often.

Whose dream was that, Yuuri thought. He always dreamed as himself, but this time… He tried to recall. 

Silver hair, long at first, then short? And now that he remembered, his hands were a lot paler than Yuuri had ever been. Predominantly Japanese, Yuuri still had a decent amount of Greek in him; even at his palest, his skin had never been that snowy white. If the other people in the dream and the boards of the ice rink were anything to go on, his dream-self was taller, too. 

Come to think, what language was that? Every time something was said or written, it was in that weird gibberish. It seemed to have had meaning to his dream-self, but looking back, it seemed like complete nonsense.

Yuuri walked to the door just as he had in his dream, but the doorknob wasn’t cold as he had expected. It was temperate; a little warm even. In fact, the entire room seemed warm. He thought nothing of it; it was summer, after all. But he did venture over to the window and slide it open before leaving his bedroom for the kitchen to make breakfast.

The hallway was short as always, but somehow it felt off. Somehow, everything felt off. Like he was a wandering soul wrongly inhabiting his own body.

He moved around the kitchen, constantly misjudging the length of his limbs. He decided on a light breakfast of toast with his mother’s homemade marmalade, but even going through the familiar motions of retrieving bread from the pantry and the marmalade jar from its place in the fridge was strange. He couldn’t get his mind off the images he had seen, especially the person who he’d been. 

Every time he closed his eyes, images of a pluming cascade of silver hair invaded his mind. He remembered it as thin and short, but flowing and long. An artful contradiction; beautiful anarchy. 

 

Yuuri felt lost, the same way he had when he’d first started sculpting. Back then, it had only been a few weeks since his crushing defeat at Nationals, and after hearing one too many comments that it was ‘too bad’ and he’d ‘do better next time’, he had gone out and gotten himself absolutely plastered at a bar.

That was where he met Minako, a lithe woman with a dancer’s poise, a maiden’s voice, and the capability to drink anyone under the table. This fact was proven by an ill-advised drinking contest, one that she remembers fondly, and he does not want to.

He only found out after that he’d passed out, and after she’d lugged him into a taxi —responsibly not letting him drive, despite his insistence— and dragged him back to her home, where she spent the night nursing a ranting, anxious, and ill Yuuri back to a somewhat sober state.

The next morning he had apologized, one of his only memories being of throwing up all over her bedspread, and made polite conversation over about twelve asprin and pancakes. They’d spent the morning lingering through awkward silences and his furious compliments of her decor, as they appeared to have nothing else in common.

Eventually, he had spotted a statue of a young ballerina en pointe, looking lovingly down at a dove perched on her finger. The statue itself was only half a foot high at most, and the dove was the size of Yuuri’s thumbnail, but the detail was so precise that it might as well have been five feet high. 

Yuuri asked where she bought the statue, and she had replied that she had carved it herself. As if that was a normal thing for a person to do.

After he sputtered out even more compliments about it, she asked if he would like to learn. Not having any other obligations, having stopped skating a week before, and figuring he had no right to deny her given all she had done for him, he obliged only after making sure he was no burden.

Over the next few weeks, Yuuri had learned how to sculpt in a variety of media: he started with clay to get the hang of the 3-dimensional form, then moving on to granite and marble, stepping up in the expense of the materials. 

He discovered Minako’s similar past: having been a ballerina all her life, she knew no other world, but after a tragic accident that broke her ankle in three places, she was left unable to put weight on that foot for long periods. So he found that the wooden cane with the elegantly carved ivory handle wasn’t just for show.

After three weeks of sulking, her husband dragged her off to a couples’ pottery class that was supposed to help with communication. They encouraged her to ‘sculpt her feelings’. She sculpted a demon.

Surprisingly well, apparently, because instead of taking the hint, her husband had complimented her talent ardently, and encouraged her to take more classes. 

Figuring it would get him off her back, she did, and found she liked it more than she thought she would.

As Yuuri eventually got into ice sculpture, the two learned from each other, collaborating on occasion. Even if he found her constant comments to ‘sculpt his feelings’ a bit cheesy, he had found it therapeutic in a way. His first ice sculpture had been of a young girl in a spiral, smiling as she glided along, to symbolize the youth he had spent skating, the youth he lost to skating, but would always look back on fondly. 

Technically, it wasn’t an excellent piece, but it was his favorite.

 

So Yuuri did as he’d done then, what felt like a lifetime ago. He sculpted his feelings. He moved to his sculpting room with purpose in his stride and a determination in his eye, pushing open the heavy, insulated door and feeling the artificial chill on his skin. 

He wondered if the dream had simply been some kind of metaphor for the person he would be if he had kept skating, for the person he might be today if he hadn’t found his new passion. What silver hair and paler skin could be a metaphor for, Yuuri was unsure, but he poured every ounce of feeling he had from the dream into his pick and chisel, and he began to carve the piece he already knew he would call, ‘Victory’.

* * *

A sculpted athletic figure, poised, stepping forward. Reaching upward as if reaching for something more. His hair was short but flowing, fanning out over his left eye as it swept upwards in an unfelt breeze. His eyes were turned upward, carved and determined, unwavering. He seemed to glow by some heavenly light, as if he himself were more than a statue; as if he were holding his breath. Waiting.

Taking the smallest chisel he had, Yuuri gave life to the thinnest of eyelashes, to each individual hair, to each dent in muscle and each curve in skin. He was tense, yet rested; forlorn, yet determined; made from ice, yet warm; he was a statue, yet he was alive.

Then the glow was amplified, as if something were warming the room. Yuuri let out a chill breath and saw the white smoke escaping his lips; no, it couldn’t be that. Plus, the room was sealed such that his sculptures could never melt. The only way warmth could get in would be if the door were left open. So he ignored it, chiseling the arch of the statue’s foot just enough from the block that it looked like his feet were simply resting upon the pedestal instead of attached to it.

Yuuri looked up again, to assure himself that he had closed and latched the door, that his statue was still solid, when he noticed his studio bathed in a slight rosy hue. If he hadn’t had the room and its colors memorized, he might not have recognized it. He blinked and rubbed at his eyes, trying to clear them and failing as the light continued to grow brighter and brighter until it seemed it would blind him. 

And then it was gone. 

Yuuri thought he must be going crazy. Maybe he had a fever. Maybe any number of things, but all other thoughts were silenced when he looked back up at his statue.

What was once ice had transformed into pale white flesh, still posed just as he had carved it. The right arm, stretched upwards, fell, and the former statue stood, awkwardly adjusting his legs to stand more normally. But as soon as the man who now stood in place of his statue tried to look toward him, silver lashes fluttered shut as his knees betrayed him, knocking together as he collapsed to the ground.

Yuuri sat still for a moment, not able to think a cogent thought. His mind receded like the ocean before a crashing tsunami. 

And then the waters fell.


	3. Questions Without Answers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Viktor finds a second chance at life.
> 
> (Alternate title: Phichit is an overprotective best friend)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long chapter with lots of fluff this time, because I love both myself and you guys. Have fun ~

The first thing he felt, the first thing he knew, was warmth. It began at his fingertips, spreading like fire through his veins down his arm through his shoulder and into his chest, like taking his first breath after holding it for an eternity. 

The heat continued, venturing from his chest through his legs, knees, ankles, until it finally dissipated at the soles of his feet. After the warmth was gone, there was a familiar chill, not quite like cold, more like his nerves hadn’t adapted to existing yet. 

Only the heat never really disappeared: it remained in a stable sort of tingling that his form had yet to recognize as real. He took another breath. It felt… strange. It felt nice. Instinctual, but also something he hadn’t done in a long time. 

Slowly, as he continued to breathe, and allowed his lungs to become acclimated to doing it. He realized his limbs felt stiff, and there was a dryness at the back of his throat. It was like he had been sleeping for a very long time, stuck in the same position.

He allowed that tenseness to relax, shifting into a more normal, or at least more natural, standing position. Unfortunately, the muscles in his legs seemed to realize at the same time that he hadn’t done this in a long time, and under the foreign weight, they buckled.

For an instant, before his world went blank once more, Viktor’s eyes fluttered open for a split second and he saw the outline of a figure. Dark hair, smooth curves, and watchful eyes. 

 

Could it be…?

* * *

He awoke once more to a tuneless lullaby of rapid syllables in a monotone tongue. His eyes were open, but his vision was blurry; all he knew at the moment was that someone with dark hair and caring eyes was leaning over him.

_Is this the language they speak now?_ Viktor thought. _Wait, why am I thinking ‘now’? Why not ‘here’? And who is Viktor? Actually, I don’t know where ‘here’ is. I don’t even know when ‘now’ is. It’s not home, but beyond that, I know nothing._

“Who are you?” the person said suddenly, in a language he did understand. The face was slowly resolving into someone he might recognize.

He tried to respond in kind with the only thing he did know, the only thing he identified with. He wasn’t sure whether it was an attribute, a name, or a sport, but it was probably a noun and it would probably do.

“Viktor,” he said, voice parched and accent thicker than he remembered it. He was unsure whether he was speaking the same dialect, or if Yuuri even understood him… _wait, who’s Yuuri? Better ask that next._ “Are you Yuuri?”

Yuuri blinked. “Yes.”

Well that’s good. Viktor… wasn’t sure where to go from there. Fortunately for him, Yuuri kept talking.

“How do you know my name?”

So it is a name! That probably means Viktor is a name too. Or it’s a really weird profession involving amnesiacs coming to live in peoples’ houses. Either way, he probably needs to respond. “She told me.”

“Who’s she?” He asked, suddenly sounding apprehensive.

Viktor tried and failed to recall. “That is… good question, and I wish I could answer.” 

Yuuri was silent then. Viktor wondered what he had done wrong. He also wondered where to go from here. The world was much less blurry now, and he could make out the details of Yuuri’s face, and also, wow, he was gorgeous. Short, silky black hair and a soft face... Viktor definitely recognized him, though how he recognized him was another question, since he just woke up two minutes ago.

“So…” Viktor paused in memory of one of the few things he knew. “Do you like ice?”

Yuuri was silent some more. His face was blank, and he was staring at Viktor like he was staring at something inside his head instead of at reality. He was saved from having to respond by a chirping, buzzing noise. Viktor had no clue what this noise meant, but Yuuri seemed to know that it meant he should pick up the little metal rectangle on the table and put it on the side of his face.

“Hello?” Yuuri asked with the metal rectangle on his face.

“Hello Yuuri,” Viktor chirped back. He thought they had already been introduced, but there was no harm in doing it again. But then another voice came through the little metal rectangle.

“Yuuri, are you still holed up in your study?” It said. Viktor didn’t like its tone.

“Actually Phichit, I’m having lunch right now so can I call you back?” Yuuri asked quickly.

“We’re having lunch?” Viktor asked excitedly. He’d never done that before! “Wait. Are we having lunch with the metal rectangle? Who is that?”

“No one,” Yuuri dismissed.

Then the metal rectangle echoed Viktor’s question. “Who’s that?” It asked even more excitedly than he had.

“No one!” Yuuri exclaimed, violently pressing on the metal rectangle and slamming it onto the table.

There was a long pause.

“That was a friend.”

“Is that his name?”

“Is what his name?”

“A friend.”

“No. His name is Phichit. ‘A friend’ is his relationship to me.”

“So… I’m a Viktor to you?”

“No. Viktor is your name.”

“Oh! And Yuuri is your name?”

“Yes. What else would it be?”

“A profession involving taking amnesiacs into your house?” Viktor doesn’t know how this additional possibility could not be obvious.

“I think you think this happens more than it does.”

“I wouldn’t know. This is the first thing I’ve ever done.”

“No, the first thing you did was come to life from an ice sculpture and fall on the floor.”  
“Oh.” Viktor put a finger to his lips and mused for a moment, studying Yuuri as he sat on the small table beside the couch Viktor was laying on. “Is that how you came to life too?” He wanted to have something in common with Yuuri.

“No. I was born.”

“Oh.” He pouted, a little disappointed. “Well I don’t know what to talk about because I’ve never done anything before this.” He paused, fiddling with the blanket between his fingers. “Have you done stuff before this?”

“Yes. I’ve done… a bunch of stuff.”  
Viktor gasped. Maybe they could talk about something after all! “Like what?”

“Uh, I’ve figure skated?”

Viktor felt like a cool breeze had just washed over his skin at the words. He pulled the blanket up over his chest a little more and briefly felt a sensation like moving, like gliding. It was disorienting to feel that while laying down. “I have, also…” he said, voice wistful and small.

“You… have?” Yuuri asked, seeming shocked.

“Yes. Can we go?”

“You need clothes.”

“You seem fine that I don’t have clothes.”  
“I’m… kind of not.” He rubbed the back of his neck, looking away.

“Oh.” Viktor muttered, like it was a moral failing that he didn’t have clothes. “I’m sorry.” 

“I-It’s okay!” Yuuri raised his hands in surrender. “We can get you some.”

“But… if it’s bad that I don’t have clothes… shouldn’t I not go outside without them? And doesn’t it follow, then, that I cannot get clothes unless I already have some?”

“Oh! You’re right. You can borrow some of mine.”

 

Viktor ended up wearing a pair of jean shorts which he barely managed to squeeze into even though they were too big for Yuuri, and an open red flannel that he would definitely break if he tried to button. Unlike everything else, their feet were around the same size, so Viktor ended up simply borrowing a pair of Yuuri’s flip-flops. 

Viktor was just as captivated by the flip-flops as he was by the car, as he was by the shopping mall, and every store in it. Yuuri ended up having to hold his hand to keep him from running off; he probably could have escaped had he wanted to, but he really liked holding Yuuri’s hand, as a matter of fact.

* * *

Phichit was angry. Phichit was very angry. Phichit had called Yuuri no less than fifteen times, wanting to know details about whatever cryptic "lunch" he was out on, wanting to ask if he could come along, and Yuuri had not picked up. Phichit felt he was justified in his anger, and as such, Phichit was going to get some tater tots. It was obviously complete coincidence that the best place for tater tots was the mall, and it was also obviously complete coincidence that the reason Yuuri had not picked up fifteen times was because he was hanging out with Very Hot Dude™ at the very same mall.

The man looked like he was carved from ice, from unnaturally fair skin, to high cheek bones that sung of providence and high-breeding, he was striking in nearly every way.

Silver locks somehow managing a haphazard appeal, without a single hair ever falling out of place. His stature was suave, but not disrespectful. Obviously a man of great stature and taste, but lined with rough and playful edges.

And, even though it was hidden behind a simple demeanor, there was something darker, something regal in his presence that could not be denied.

Something born of blood and fire and suffering that made itself known through his eyes.

His eyes.

They were unnatural.

They were the smoking hue of gunmetal, reflective like cold steel and ice. All imperfections were cut, like diamonds, glowing softly with ease, but hiding a frosty, impersonal kind of coldness that felt misplaced when paired with such a warm expression.

That man was holding Yuuri’s hand and gesturing toward things, talking animatedly and asking questions. They walked towards an ice cream shop.

Ooh, thought Phichit, so that’s your date. Ice cream after lunch, huh? Sounds good. He might as well join them. As Yuuri’s best friend, it was in fact his job to weed out any idiots Yuuri might accidentally find himself dating. Even idiots with beautiful, chilling eyes.

Putting on his best innocent-best-friend smile, Phichit got up from his table and walked over to the line where the two were standing. “Heyyyy, Yuuri! What’s up?”

Yuuri whipped around, standing completely shocked amongst a sea of other customers who didn’t seem to notice. Phichit noticed that the instant they were both turned around, Yuuri and Mystery Ice Man linked hands again. “Oh, hi Phichit. I didn’t know you were here.”

“Yeah, came to get some tater tots because someone wasn’t answering their phone!”

“Oh, uh, sorry…”

“Not a problem, darling.” Yuuri knew Phichit only called him ‘darling’ when he was pissed. Yuuri also knew that tater tots were Phichit’s preferred comfort food. So that combination had to sit badly with him. “So who’s your date?”

“He’s not my date! I’m just… showing him around town.”

Phichit chose not to comment on the hand-holding for the time being, only giving Yuuri a sly glance. “I see. So, you never told me your name, stranger. I’m Phichit! Yuuri’s best friend.” He says the words ‘best friend’ like a threat.

Handsome Mystery Dude doesn’t seem to care. He takes Phichit’s outstretched hand and shakes it cordially, like he’s some sort of lost royalty. “Hello, Phichit,” he says, with a goddamn Russian accent of all things, “I’m Viktor. A pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

Phichit raised an eyebrow. “Likewise. So. Viktor. How long have you been in the area?”

Viktor looked to Yuuri, who answered for him. “Only about a week. He was looking for a place to stay so he’s moved in with me until he can find one.”

“I see. And where did you move from?”

“St. Petersburg. Russia.” Viktor answered for himself this time, but in such a haughty tone that he might as well have explicitly said ‘I’m too good for you’ out loud. Like he was only interacting with Phichit because Yuuri knew him.

“Uh-huh. And you’re in Detroit now because…”

“Because of Yuuri!”

Yuuri scrambled to cover for this response, and Phichit marked another tick mark in his mental ‘they’re dating’ column. “We- We knew each other when I was skating! He got into contact a few days ago saying he’d be moving here and did I have a place to stay and I said yes! It’s not that big of a deal- we’re not dating!”

All Phichit had time to do was give a wry look when he was rudely interrupted by the cashier taking their order. Having spent his time in line talking to Phichit instead of deciding what he wanted, Yuuri scrambled to figure it out. Deciding he would grill Yuuri about his date more later on, Phichit shot Yuuri a look he was sure would convey that.

* * *

“Uh, so, I’ll have a chocolate vanilla milkshake and- Viktor? What do you want?” Yuuri asked. It was just his luck that Phichit would show up and interrupt him as he tried to explain to Viktor what a milkshake was, thus also preventing either of them from deciding on a flavor. Yuuri fell back on ordering his usual, but Viktor, having been figuratively born earlier today, did not have a usual.

Viktor smiled a sweet little smile that was far too charming for his own good and shook his head with a huff of breath that formed like laughter. “Yuuri, you don’t have to do anything for me. Just being with you is enough.”

“Viktor, I just bought you like three hundred dollars worth of clothes, and you’re drawing the line at a five dollar milkshake? C’mon. Which flavor do you want. They’ve got strawberry, vanilla…” Yuuri trailed off his helpless attempt at reading the menu, knowing Viktor did in fact read fluent English.

Viktor looked dazed, only vaguely looking at the menu. “You mean… clothing isn’t free?" He looked back fully at Yuuri, eyes glassy with tears. "Wait. Is clothing rationed like food now? Oh Yuuri, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to make you waste your rations on-“

“…Rations? Viktor, what?”

The cashier interrupted in the dullest voice possible, as if this were another normal interaction for people to have at 2pm on a Wednesday. “Is there anything else?”

“N-nevermind. Viktor. Pick a flavor.”

“Really Yuuri, you don’t have to!”

“Viktor. Pick. A. Flavor.”

“…what did you get?”

“Chocolate vanilla swirl.”

At last Viktor shifted his eyes fully away from Yuuri, seemingly an act of great effort, like pulling a large magnet from its opposite pole. “Another of those please?” he asked the cashier.

The cashier rung them up and took Yuuri’s cash. They went to a nearby table and sat with their milkshakes. The first few minutes were passed in silence: Viktor looked confused but said nothing, as if speaking would offend someone; his hands were folded on the table like he was trying to take up as little space as humanly possible.

“Viktor,” Yuuri said, slowly, pushing his milkshake into the center of the table and propping his elbows up on it. The way he leaned towards Viktor as a result seemed almost accidental. Almost. “What do you remember? You talk like you know nothing, but then randomly you infer things which don’t make logical sense. When you first woke up, you knew my name, but you didn’t know what a name was. You knew you were from St. Petersburg, Russia, when I had to explain to you a few minutes ago that the language we were both speaking was called English. And just now you assumed that food was rationed, as if we were in a war.”

Viktor looked off to the side, ashamed, not wanting to meet Yuuri’s eyes. 

“The last time anything was rationed was over fifty years ago,” Yuuri muttered.

“I don’t know, Yuuri.” His voice was low and hesitant, like his speech was not the product of thought already formed, but the formation of it. “I don’t know anything, but sometimes someone asks me something and I just know the answer,” he furrowed his brow, the single crease making him look years older. “I don’t know why I know, I just do.” 

Previously, Viktor had been a constant flow of energy and movement, his voice high and light, making clear his zeal for life. Now, it was… slow. Almost sensual, but cold in a way that sent a chill up Yuuri’s spine. He could feel the frost emanating from Viktor’s blue eyes.

“Before I woke up, a woman told me your name. I’m not sure who she was. When your friend asked where I came from, I recalled the seagulls on the beach and I recalled the name of the city.” Viktor spoke in a measured rhythm. “I did nothing before I woke in your home, so I don’t know how I would have remembered this. And I had no idea how food and clothing would be divided out if they were not rationed. I suppose I assumed.” 

There was a long pause. Viktor fiddled with the obnoxiously red straw of his milkshake, eyes focused on it. He didn’t know whether it would be reasonable to ask, but he mustered up the courage to do it anyway. “Can we... still go ice skating?”

The question was so quiet Yuuri almost didn’t register it. When he did, he couldn’t help his smile. “I did say we would, didn’t I.”

* * *

They ended up returning to Yuuri’s house to fetch two pairs of Yuuri’s old skates. Too broken down for a competitive athlete, but more than adequate for recreational purposes. Though he hadn’t been there in years, Yuuri didn’t need to look up the directions to his old training rink, nor did he have to look up the public ice times. They arrived about twenty minutes into the midday public session and Yuuri paid for two passes.

Viktor laced his skates as easily as he dressed himself. He had a bit of a difficult time figuring out how to work with the fact that Edea skates laced from the inside out, but after that he was done in less than two minutes. Yuuri, in much the same situation for a more obvious reason, joined him as he walked through the rink doors.

Cool air filled the near-empty ice rink. Yuuri glanced over the vacant stands, where skaters’ parents would sit during freestyle sessions, chatting about this or that while their children trained. He looked at the benches on the far side of the rink, where the coaches would sit with their thick coats and hot cups of tea and coffee; ice rinks are pretty cold if you’re not skating. He looked at the banners, each for a year of the Winter Olympics with the corresponding logo. He remembered when he was a little kid and he would look at those banners and think, I’m going to go to one of those someday.

Yuuri regained his bearings in time to notice that while he had been frozen in place by his thoughts, Viktor was already skating around the ice. He moved with the grace of a professional, the confidence of sure victory. There was no hesitation in his steps; in fact, there was a relief that looked like star-crossed lovers reunited. Every stroke was full of joy and passion; just as his every word glowed with his zeal for life, his every move glowed with his zeal for skating. Where did this come from?

Yuuri felt himself drawn towards Viktor, and soon his feet moved him toward the ice without his consent. As he stepped on, the ache which had resided in his chest began to change. What was once regret was turning into a shaky admiration, and in a moment he understood what Viktor was feeling. He took a few hesitant strokes, forcing himself to feel instead of think. He sped up, appreciating the feel of his blades under him and the chill air that brushed heat across his cheeks and ears. He did a quick mohawk in time with the cheesy pop music playing softly over the rink speakers and lost himself in the foreign familiarity of his old warmup. 

A pang of guilt struck at Yuuri as he held a landing position around the short end of the rink, and he turned to stop. It wasn’t for all the lost competition years, but for all the lost skating time. How could he have let himself stay away from the ice for so long? He loved this, once, a long time ago, but he’d let the fog of failure cloud the clear ice. He’d let himself forget why he skated in the first place.

Nodding to himself, standing in the corner of the ice, Yuuri struck a pose and began his old step sequence. _I’ll just have to remember it now._

* * *

Eventually he found Viktor leaning on his elbows against the far side of the boards, near where his coach had used to stand. He skated over and propped his hand on the boards, facing Viktor. "Hey."

"Hi, Yuuri." Viktor was staring off into the empty stands. "Are these skates ok to jump in, do you think?"

"Sure," Yuuri replied with a shrug. "My coach made me get new ones as soon as they even started to break down, so they should be safe."

Viktor nodded absently before skating off, his determined blue eyes a reflection of the ice that crunched under his golden blades. Yuuri had to remind himself that he was carved from that same ice. It seemed so ludicrous even though Yuuri had watched it happen.

A huge waltz jump, arms in a ballerina’s first position, legs spread wide as he leaped. It was the sort of jump you would see on an Olympic warmup. And yet, it looked shaky, like the jump of a brilliant skater returning to the ice from a serious injury. 

Viktor didn’t stop at the waltz jump. He did a single loop, then two in a row, and then a single axel. It looked like he felt strange, but exhilarated. With a rest in between every few jumps, Viktor ran through his doubles in order: salchow, toe loop, loop, flip, lutz. He did the lutz three times, not seeming satisfied with it even as he returned to Yuuri’s side at the boards.

He thumped his fist on the boards and with great vigor said, "Yuuri, skate with me." 

Yuuri blinked. "Why?"

Viktor looked at him like that was a stupid question with an obvious answer. "Because you’re beautiful and I want to skate with you." He hopped up onto the boards."Do you need to warm up more? I can wait." 

If purely to hide his blush, Yuuri nodded and skated away to do some jumps. Unlike Viktor, he had no magical ice powers or whatever, and he had been off the ice for four years, so his jumps were shaky and clumsy. He had to reskate each one several times, and it took skating a few laps before he got the courage to do a single axel.

Viktor said he was beautiful. Why? What about him made him think that? Of the two of them, it was obvious which was a better skater, a more attractive man, a superior human being in general. Even if Viktor did remember almost nothing except how to speak two languages and figure skate. Furthermore, they’d only known each other for a day. Yuuri would be lying if he said he had felt nothing for the statue he’d carved, but to be fair, this was not an uncommon occurrence. He sculpted attractive men on a somewhat regular basis, and he was Very Gay. It made sense that Yuuri might be a little flustered over Viktor... but why was Viktor flustered over him? No, not flustered... admiring?

Still confused but no longer feverishly blushing, Yuuri returned to the boards where Viktor had apparently been watching him the whole time. "Are you ready now?"

Yuuri nodded.

Viktor smiled, a tender pink brushing his cheeks and quiet lips as he took Yuuri’s hand in his, and Yuuri felt his breath hitch. They stroked in time with the quiet music, and when Viktor turned and spun, Yuuri followed. As they skated together, falling into a dance hold almost instinctually, Yuuri admired Viktor. He couldn’t help it; the man he skated with now was so much more beautiful than the statue he’d carved. The fringe he’d fanned out in an imaginary wind now shifted to and fro in a real breeze, the cold lips he’d parted in awe now spread into a warm heart-shaped smile, the hard muscles he’d molded into form were now supple under his hands. Only his eyes showed the ice from whence he’d come, but even so, they weren’t cold or uncaring. Instead, they were beautiful and blue, light and clear, the hue of the exact point where open ocean met free sky, with glimpses of his soul visible through the reflections of the rink lights.

As Viktor jumped, Yuuri matched him as best he could. Yuuri decided to pick up speed for a spiral sequence and Viktor joined him, lightly holding his hands as they glided together. After no more than a few words, "have you done lifts before" and "yes", they tried some. They weren’t very good at it, but it was fun, and they were laughing, and Yuuri couldn’t remember the last time he’d had this much fun on the ice. He always used to get off the ice upset with himself, used to spend his ice time beating himself up both mentally and physically. But with Viktor it was the kind of effortless he had always wished it would be. Maybe the problem wasn’t his skill, it was his mentality. 

They tried to synchronize their footwork sequences but ended up just doing a haphazard combination of a variety of different steps with one or two neat-looking pairs things mixed in there. Spinning in synch was a skill neither of them had ever developed, and without prior choreography (or even a word said between them) it was hard to even synchronize the _types_ of spins they were doing. And yet, every time Yuuri wanted to feel self-conscious, Viktor glanced at him and suddenly, he was okay.

They stopped after a few songs, tired and out of breath, and leapt up onto the boards together. They sat there, kicking at the boards. "You’re amazing, Yuuri," Viktor breathed, smiling. "Thank you for this."

Yuuri smiled down at his feet. "Thank _you_. I never thought I would be able to have this much fun on ice."

Viktor raised an eyebrow. "Why?"

_Oh. Right. He doesn’t know._ "When I used to skate, I... didn’t like it very much. I was really sure I was going to do great things, and so I didn’t give myself any room for error. Eventually, one big failure led me to just stop. I haven’t laced up a pair of skates in years." It was surprising how small the ache was, saying that now. 

"The world which pushed you to failure has lost something incredibly valuable." 

Yuuri looked up quickly, but Viktor was staring across the empty ice instead of looking at him. 

He changed the subject. "Do you... know how you can do all that?" 

Viktor bit his lip. Blinked once, twice. And then he nodded. "Bits and pieces. It was... strange. I remember having longer hair then, but you made me like _this_ , so..." He brushed his fingers through his fringe. "Maybe I was thinking of this."

Yuuri remembered a cascade of silver. "...Do you remember having it up? Like... in a ponytail?" 

"Yes. I pulled it up every morning after I stretched."

Why the past tense? Viktor didn’t have a past before he came to life in Yuuri’s studio. Did he? Yuuri considered it. If he didn’t, where would these memories come from? But if he did, when was it? There were far too many questions without enough answers. Yuuri knew a broad question like 'when was this' wouldn’t do, so he tried to ask a simpler one. "What did you do after that?"

"I... The ice rink. I skated. I trained with a drama queen named Georgi... then there was ballet. I trained under Lilia, and a ballerina there, Gavrik, he made fun of me for wearing makeup. Then shower and lunch and more skating. A bit of schooling after that, and gymnastics. I came home after that, and I would eat dinner with Yakov." From the look on Viktor’s face, he was thinking of a lot of the same questions that Yuuri was. "But Yuuri, I don’t understand. How do I know these things? Why do I remember some things so vividly and others not at all?"

Yuuri rested his hand on Viktor’s shoulder, which earned him a small, pained smile. "I don’t know, but don’t worry about it. You remember more now than you did earlier today, right? It’ll come back." It wasn’t like Yuuri to console people, especially when he wasn’t sure of the truth of his statements. But it also wasn’t like Yuuri to enjoy skating, so today was just going to be full of surprises. He checked the clock. 4:07. They still had almost an hour left in the public session. He hopped off the boards and offered Viktor his hand. "You want to skate some more?"

Viktor’s smile was nothing short of beaming. "Yes, please."


	4. Dreams and Cold Memories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Viktor discovers both the Internet and his past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took an absolute eternity! We're old people and we're tired and we've been to too many hospitals recently. (Neither of us is over the age of thirty, but we feel like we are, and dammit, it's the mood that matters.)
> 
> Welcome to pain land, hope you enjoy your stay. (@Coffee_Scribbles is a sadist. Sorry.)

The drive back to Yuuri’s home was, despite everything, just as energized as the drive there, if not more so. Viktor chatted aimlessly the whole drive, boundless and no longer stifled. He chatted about road signs and about skating and about Yuuri and more about skating the entire way back.

* * *

"Yuuri!" Viktor called, voice somewhat muffled by the plush sound of the shower and the solid oak of his bathroom door. "Help me work your shower!"

Yuuri, who had already turned on the water for him and shown him where everything was about ten minutes ago, shouted, "The water’s already running! What do you need help with!"

"I need to know where your shampoo is! I don’t see the box anywhere and I want to find it before I get all wet!" 

Yuuri was 100% sure that if he just walked in, Viktor would be 200% naked. 

As if reading his mind, Viktor called out again, "Please come in and help, I’ll put a towel on and everything."

Yuuri sighed, waiting a few seconds before muttering a small "fine" and marching toward the door, where he knocked and waited.

"Okay, I’m appropriately covered, your virgin eyes can come in now."

"I literally carved your dick from ice, but okay," Yuuri muttered as he pushed the door open. Hot steam clouded his glasses and affronted his senses, making his clothes stick to him uncomfortably. Squinting, he pulled off his glasses and fruitlessly tried to scrub away the fog. Yuuri sighed and walked over to the shower. He picked up the shampoo bottle. "It’s right here," he said, "see?" He pointed to the label on the bottle. "It says shampoo."

"You don’t have to mix it?"

"Mix... it?"

"Yeah, y’know, pour some in a bowl with hot water and mix it? Oh, or is that pre-mixed?" Viktor's fuzzy form probably cocked his head.

"I guess? Here, look." Yuuri opened the cap and poured a little into his hand. Viktor peered closely, extremely surprised at the blue gel. 

"Wow! That’s different." Viktor might have had more to say on the subject, but he decided to just take the shampoo bottle and stick it in the shower. Yuuri contemplated the glob of blue in his hand. When Viktor walked back over, Yuuri smeared the glob of shampoo into his hair, slicking back his fringe. Wow, he was gorgeous with both eyes showing. Why did Yuuri give him that fringe again?

Viktor was shocked and appalled. "Hey! Yuuri...." he pouted. Yuuri had to admit it, he’s adorable when he pouts.

"What? You’re getting right into the shower anyway."

Viktor nodded but sulked away anyway. Yuuri rolled his eyes and closed the door behind him.

* * *

Yuuri walked over and sat on his couch, grabbing his laptop from the end table and opening it out of habit. He didn’t look anything up or put music on, he just absently stared at the webpage he’d been reading most recently. He had a lot to wrap his brain around from the last twenty-four hours.

The biggest and most obvious change from his life yesterday was Viktor, who had transformed from his ice sculpture, inside of his house, and proceeded to take his life by storm. Yuuri... honestly didn’t mind that. At all. Viktor was nice, gracious, adorable, and certainly not bad to look at. He didn’t seem to get frustrated at his amnesia, just acted on what he did remember and was eager to learn about things he didn’t. 

The problem with Viktor’s arrival is that Yuuri had no clue how it happened. He’d already ruled out the prank idea: it was impossible, mainly because Yuuri saw it happen. Honestly, Yuuri never expected anything to happen in his life that was this mystical or strange. He never expected to be one of those people who saw a ghost, or had a chat with Bigfoot, and was disbelieved by everyone. The only other reasonable explanation was some kind of magic, or a technology so advanced it might as well be magic. But if it was magic, why him? Why now? And why Viktor?

The other problem was that Viktor seemed to have had a whole previous life, in which he lived in St. Petersburg, grew up speaking Russian, learned English at some point, and figure skated professionally. Maybe other things. He just didn’t seem to remember most of it.

Yuuri sighed, head hitting the back of the couch as he ran a hand through his hair, slicking it back halfway. He looked up at the ceiling. Too many questions and not enough answers. That was the problem with magic as an answer: it’s really more of a question.

There was a more practical side to this situation. He effectively had a roommate now, but his roommate had no idea how to have a job, or perhaps even what a job was. So, actually, it was more like he was suddenly supporting a stay-at-home husband. He did make enough from his sculptures to make that work, but money would be tighter than usual. He could always sell more - he hardly worked full time at this - but overall it would make more sense to help Viktor get a job. Assuming his stay on the mortal plane was more-or-less permanent, this would be the best plan.

Yuuri opened his Notes app and created a new file. "Viktor notes" he titled it, and started a list. 

  * help him get a job



What were some more goals, or otherwise good things for Viktor to do eventually? What could Yuuri help him with?

  * help him get a job
  * save for new skates
  * help him remember more about his past life



That last point was especially important for the job hunt, because Yuuri really had no idea what skills Viktor had. Fluency in two languages was bound to be useful for something, but what else did he know that neither of them knew he knew yet?

Yuuri didn’t get to consider it, because Viktor threw open the bathroom door and waltzed over to the couch, a towel around his hips and another tossed over his shoulders. "All yours, _cherí,_ " Viktor said.

Yuuri made a mental note to potentially add French to the list of Viktor’s known languages as he nodded, closed his laptop, stood, and headed for the bathroom.

* * *

Viktor and Yuuri sat on the couch. Yuuri had changed into pajamas out of the shower, Viktor was still in his towel.

After a few minutes, Yuuri opened his laptop. He was curious. "Hey, Viktor? Do you remember your last name, by chance?"

Viktor nodded. "Nikiforov." He glanced over at Yuuri’s laptop, mesmerized. "Mac Book Air. What’s that?"

Yuuri took a deep breath as he typed Viktor’s name into the Google search bar. How to explain computers? "Uhhh... it’s kind of like... if anybody anywhere knows something, then I can find out."

"You can access the collective knowledge of the human race through a strange metal book?

"Pretty much."

"Wow! Amazing!"

Yuuri laughed as he hit the enter button to search Viktor’s name. 

The first result was a Wikipedia page. After that, there were some image results that looked like screenshots from a video game, and then there were suggestions to find people named Viktor Nikiforov on LinkedIn and Facebook and such. 

Yuuri clicked on the Wikipedia page, Viktor looking over his shoulder. He could smell his own shampoo on Viktor’s hair, which was interesting especially because it smelled different on him. The article was relatively short; the summary read: 

 

Viktor Nikiforov (Russian: Виктор Никифоров) was a Russian figure skater. 

Viktor Nikiforov was the 1913 and 1914 Russian Champion and World Champion. He won gold in the Mens’ Singles event of the 1908 Summer Olympics.

He lost his life at the front of the First World War.

 

Subsequent was a catalog of the honors he’d won before and after (but mostly after) his death in the war, and some info about the memorial to him. There was an article linked about how, as with many soldiers, Nikiforov could not actually be buried, since his body was never found, but that according to his comrades Yuri Plisetsky and Mila Babicheva, he had jumped on top of a grenade to save them, and as such he was counted KIA.

There wasn’t a lot of information overall, but it all felt strangely familiar to Yuuri. He kept checking through various articles, trying to find out more. He found a Russian website with the testimonials made by Nikiforov’s comrades, but Google Translate turned it into gobbeltygook.

"Yuuri," said a small voice from over his shoulder. _Oh, right. I have someone right here who’s fluent in Russian._

"Viktor," Yuuri replied, turning to look. He was startled by what he saw. Where he’d been expecting Viktor’s usual enthusiasm, he got a shellshocked, shaken, sad and quiet face. "...Viktor?"

"I.... remember them. Yuri, and Mila. I remember them. Can you turn it back so I can read... what they said?"

Yuuri nodded silently, clicking the Translate widget and selecting the Original option. As he saw the page turn back into the Cyrillic, he was hit with a flash of memory. He’d seen these vaguely-nonsense characters before. This was the language he’d seen in his dream last night.

He turned to watch Viktor read in his native tongue and read the emotions that flashed through his eyes. He chuckled, subdued, under his breath, a few times while reading Yuri’s. His face was blank while reading Mila’s. By the end, his eyes shined with tears.

After a long period of silence, during which Yuuri had no idea what to do or say, Viktor spoke up. His voice was a hoarse whisper, and it cracked several times. "I... remember this."

Viktor took a shaky breath and continued, voice stronger. "We were in the foxhole together, shooting, but nobody else noticed the soldier running at us from the side with a grenade. I didn’t notice in enough time to do anything but tell them to run. And-"

"-Yuri wanted to stay but you knew anyone nearby would die and it had to be one of you so you decided it had to be you, Mila picked Yuri up and ran off carrying him, you curled around the grenade and then, bang." Yuuri completed Viktor’s memory.

Viktor sat there, gaping. His voice was small again. "How did you...?"

"I- I had a dream. I think, I think it was a dream about you. It inspired me to create the sculpture that became, well..."

"Me."

"Yeah."

There was a silence that hung between them and screamed _how,_ but neither of them knew how to answer that question, so they didn’t speak.

Viktor detached himself from Yuuri’s shoulder and leaned back against the arm of the couch. He shifted around several times, not seeming comfortable in any position. "Yuuri, do you have a bed?" he asked quietly.

"Yeah, why?"

"Can we share?"

Yuuri opened his mouth to say no, but he turned towards Viktor and froze. He looked so small and afraid. He’d been so sweet so far that it didn’t make sense to deny him something that was objectively fine. He took a breath. "Sure. But keep your clothes on."

* * *

Yuuri had never shared a bed with someone before. Sure, he shared a _room_ with Phichit during their college days, but that was far from the same thing. He was used to having a queen bed to himself, and now he had to share it. Of his own volition, but still.

He went through his normal bedtime routine - he brushed his teeth, washed his face, put his pajamas on - but it was odd to have another person there, sitting on the edge of _his_ bed, tossing his socks and shirt on _his_ floor, waiting to use _his_ sink. Yuuri supposed he’d have to get used to it, but for now it was strange.

Viktor crawled under the covers a few minutes after Yuuri did, careful to keep on his half of the bed and not infringe on Yuuri’s space while they both got comfortable. Yuuri turned off the only remaining lamp, so besides the soft amber light of the sunset through the curtains, the room was bathed in darkness.

At first it was quiet, save only for their asynchronous breathing. Yuuri was evidently more tired than he thought, because soon he was drifting off. He would have just fallen asleep right there and then had Viktor not jolted abruptly upright, breathing like he’d just skated a four-minute program. 

"Viktor?" Yuuri asked, concerned, voice laced with sleep. He sat up groggily and saw Viktor staring out the window with a shaking gaze. The sun was nearly set, the last dregs of pink and orange draining from the greying clouds. It cast Viktor’s blue eyes in more of a warm grey, like blown glass. 

Viktor didn’t respond at first, trying to steady his breathing.

"Nightmare?" Yuuri wondered, putting a hand on Viktor’s back. His skin was damp with sweat.

"I... think so. I’m sorry for keeping you up, Yuuri. Sleep, please." Viktor turned toward Yuuri but didn’t meet his eyes, moving his hand off his back and turning back toward the window.

"Viktor, can you tell me more? I want you to get some sleep too."

"I don’t... think I can." Viktor hung his head. "I can try, but when I tried before, I couldn’t... I remembered - or dreamt, I’m not sure. I felt... cold." 

"Like, in an ice rink?"

"No... It felt like... all my warmth was leaving; through here," he pressed his hand against his left side, just below his ribcage. His eyes glanced briefly to Yuuri, but flickered back again. He pressed his hand into his skin harder, as if trying to feel something that wasn’t there. "I was laying on very warm ground, it was... it was damp, and someone was kneeling over me, screaming at me, telling me to stay awake, to not give up, to not... die. Their voice kept blurring." Viktor shook his head, burrowing his face in his hands.

Yuuri could infer. A memory from the war, or maybe a dream cobbling together memories from it. Either way, nothing good. "Do you know who this was?"

Viktor slowly lifted his head from his hands. "I... everything was so surreal, I don’t remember. I was laying on the ground and looking up at the sky, and it looked like I was laying at the bottom of a water glass as someone stirred it. I don’t know who it was."

That sounded like a concussion. And combined with the earlier description... he could have been shot. Cold, but laying on warm, damp ground... it sounded like he was bleeding out. Yuuri shouldn’t be thinking so analytically, but there wasn’t another way to keep the anxiety out. Besides, his logic said, it had either already happened or never had, and regardless, it wasn’t important anymore. What was important was getting Viktor to sleep. "That’s alright," he said. "Can you lay back down?"

Viktor nodded, slowly. His silhouette moved from the window and Yuuri saw the darkening sky speckled with stars. Another day he would’ve marveled at the sight, but tonight he had someone much more important in mind.

"Breathe, slowly for me. In for six, out for six. Okay?" Yuuri could barely make out a nod. He counted to six under his breath, hearing Viktor’s shaky inhale. Then he counted again, hearing a slightly calmer exhale. He continued to count, over and over again. Between counts, he asked quietly, "Is there anything else I can do?"

"Hold my hand..?" Viktor breathed in and out one more time, slowly even without Yuuri’s count. "Please."

Yuuri felt his chest seize and his pulse quicken. He nodded in lieu of the _of course_ he couldn’t quite bring himself to say, grabbed Viktor’s hand, and lay by his side.

He didn’t seem to need to count for Viktor anymore, so he just synchronized their breathing, watching his chest rise and fall easily. For a while Yuuri sat and watched, at first under the pretense of making sure he fell asleep easily, but then it turned into simply admiring how a sleeping Viktor looked. His head was tilted slightly, showing off his chiseled jawline, his lips parted and glistening in the light of stars and neighbors’ porches. His silver hair fell in perfect, messy strokes across the pillowcase, his silver lashes fluttering in dreams.

Yuuri only considered going to sleep when his eyes burned and his vision blurred. And even then, as he shut his eyes and let himself leave the waking world, he kept his fingers interlaced with Viktor’s.

 

 


	5. Moving Forward

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phichit reconciles with Viktor in the best way possible: IHOP pancakes. Phichit then finds out about Viktor's past, and his skating ability.
> 
> Viktor begins to figure out what he wants to do with his second chance at life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What? Booklovertwilight is posting more than one chapter in a single month??? Yeah, I've had a tiny bit more time to write over the holidays, so there's a new chapter for both this story and HSBG. 
> 
> Have a nice long chapter this time, also. Merry Christmas.

Yuuri awoke to a ringing phone and an empty bed.

He knew, of course, who was calling him. Nobody else ever did. He didn’t know where Viktor was, but he probably wouldn’t have gone anywhere without Yuuri, so that could wait.

"Hey, Phichit."

"Hi Yuuri! Hey, sorry for calling so early. I just wanted to tell you I’m sorry I was kind of an asshole yesterday. I would like to know more about this Viktor guy, that doesn’t involve me threatening him in subtext. I understand if he doesn’t wanna talk to me, but if you’re both game, I’d love to take you guys for lunch or something."

"Well that went from 0 to 60 in 0.5 seconds," Yuuri said, "but anyway, it’s cool. You just do that because you don’t want me to get hurt." He tossed the covers off and stood sleepily, propping himself up against his nightstand. He sighed, clearing his throat. "About lunch, that sounds good, but you’ve gotta give me at least five hours to wake up first if you want me sentient."

Phichit laughed. "You got it. Thanks for not being pissed." A little chirp echoed through the phone. "Chestnut says hi." Chestnut was one of Phichit’s several hamsters, who liked to ride in his shirt pocket and be very vocal about her enthusiasm for doing so. 

"Hi, Chestnut," Yuuri said with a grin, walking over to his closet to try and pick out some clothes. Without even thinking about it, he grabbed one of the shirts he’d bought Viktor yesterday: a soft t-shirt with thick blue and white horizontal stripes. He put the phone on speaker as he pulled it on. "Don’t worry about it, either. You put up with me all the time, I can handle a bit of trademark-BFF-overprotectiveness."

"I don’t 'put up with you', Yuuri. Anyway, I’ll give you some time to get dressed and wake up. It’s about 9 now, how about lunch at 2 at our usual IHOP?"

"Sounds perfect. Brunch at 2pm. See you then!"

"Ciao!"

* * *

After Yuuri had put on a pair of black skinny jeans to go with his baggy t-shirt and done a few quick stretches, he left the bedroom. He moved down the hallway and into the kitchen, where he found Viktor scribbling on some paper at the island.

"Hey," Yuuri said. 

Viktor stopped writing and turned around. "Oh, hi Yuuri!"

Yuuri walked over and sat next to Viktor at the bar. "Have you had breakfast?"

Viktor shrugged. "I had some milk, but I don’t know how your appliances work and I don’t want to break them, so I haven’t had anything else."

"I should make you something, then. It’s very easy, here." Yuuri got up and gestured for Viktor to follow - how long had he been up, he moved so gracefully - and walked over to the fridge. He bent down and grabbed a carton of eggs and a package of sliced cheddar cheese, setting them on the counter. 

Viktor picked up and inspected the cheese. "They slice it for you?"

Yuuri nodded. He hadn’t really realized this in words before now, but on top of Viktor’s just-plain-amnesia, what knowledge he did have was a century out of date. Did they really not have sliced cheese in the 1910s?

Yuuri grabbed the bread from the pantry and fetched two slices, then stuck them into the toaster. "Can you fetch me two plates? They’re in the cabinet behind you." 

Viktor came back with them and set them on the counter. As Yuuri turned on his electric stove to medium, he stared at the two floral plates sitting on the counter next to each other. It looked so domestic. 

Yuuri grabbed his butter holder and cut a pad into the pan, watching it sizzle as the pan heated up. He cracked the eggs, took a spatula and broke the yolks, and tried to keep them from spilling together and turning into an omelet before he could fetch the pepper.

Yuuri was failing miserably, but fortunately, now he had another person around to help. "Hey, Viktor?"

"Yes, Yuuri?" It was unfair how enthusiastic he was to be helping Yuuri do simple tasks.

"Would you mind fetching me the pepper? It’s on the spice rack to your left." Yuuri tried and failed to pay attention to his misbehaving eggs as Viktor turned around. It was also unfair how cute Viktor looked.

"Here you go! Anything else?"

Yuuri shook his head. No, except possibly some pixie dust to make Yuuri a good enough cook to make Viktor’s egg into a heart-shape to match his perfect smile. He seasoned the eggs and capped the pepper grinder.

Viktor fetched the toast from the toaster when it popped and set it on the plates. As the eggs fried, Yuuri opened the cheese packet and stuck the cheese on the toast. Soon thereafter, the eggs were ready, and he put an egg onto each set of toast and cheese. He grabbed himself a glass of apple juice and sat at the bar, next to the spot Viktor had been writing at earlier. He glanced at Viktor’s papers, but couldn’t understand the Cyrillic.

"What are these called?" Viktor asked, gesturing to his egg-cheese-and-toast-thing after he sat down with his own plate and glass of juice - had he mimicked Yuuri’s routine?

"Egg sandwiches," Yuuri replied, sipping his juice. "I learned about them from my old skating coach."

Viktor nodded and began scarfing his down. 

Yuuri chuckled. "That good, huh?" He took a bite of his. He’d done a decent job at making the eggs this time, but overall it was pretty difficult to make an egg sandwich taste bad.

"Of course! Also I haven’t really eaten today. Um." Viktor rubbed the back of his neck. "I don’t want to take more of your food-"

"You won’t. Remember Phichit, from yesterday?"

"Your friend?" Viktor didn’t sound happy about it.

"He wanted to apologize for being, in his words, overprotective and an asshole. So he’s taking us for lunch." 

"Mm." Viktor took a few more bites of his sandwich. His tone brightened considerably. "Sounds good. When?"

"2pm."

"I don’t know, Yuuri. I’m not sure I can last so long." 

Yuuri was worried until he turned and saw Viktor’s joking smirk. He rolled his eyes as he ate a bit more of his sandwich. 

"What were you writing, by the way?"

Viktor had finished his sandwich, but was taking his time a bit more with the juice, like he wanted to savor it. "Not much. A sort of to-do list. Things to find out, things to do."

"What’s on it? I can’t read Russian."

"The first one is, do some research into how the world works nowadays. English doesn’t seem to have changed too much, though I’ve noticed people write much more casually, more like they talk. But the economy has: we’re no longer at war. On top of that, I’m in a different nation, so my current understanding isn’t even useful as background." Viktor looked back at his paper. "I need to understand the workings of your metal devices which let you access the knowledge of humanity to do that, so I have a note here to ask you about that." He pointed at a spot on the paper off to the side.

That all made an awful lot of sense, actually. Viktor was very perceptive. Yuuri nodded along as he continued to eat his sandwich and sip his juice.

"I have another note to figure out how this country works in terms of paying athletes, and in general whether I can make a living as a figure skater. If so, I need to find out how to do that, and if not, I need another career path. I have some options, but I couldn’t help but base them on the job market as I remember it from a hundred years ago, and I assume it’s changed a lot, so they’re probably useless." 

As soon as Yuuri finished his sandwich, Viktor took both of their plates and put them in the sink. When he returned, he gathered his papers and tapped them on the table twice to straighten them. This wasn’t technically an old-fashioned thing to do, but Yuuri thought of it that way anyways.

"You wanted me to help you use the internet?" Yuuri asked, standing and grabbing his juice on his way to his couch. 

Viktor sat down beside him, arm snaking around Yuuri’s waist and propping his chin over his shoulder as Yuuri opened his laptop. "Is that what it’s called? Inter Net."

"Yup. I think it stands for interconnected network." Yuuri typed _figure skating_ into the search bar. "So, I don’t know if this is a good explanation, so tell me if you don’t get it. You understand books and libraries, right? And markets?"

Viktor nodded into his shoulder. "Mhm."

"Well, the internet is like a combination of every book, every library, and every marketplace, all over the world, in one place. And anyone can access it instantaneously." Yuuri hit the enter key, then pointed at his screen, careful not to touch it and smudge it. "So, see here, I searched the internet for 'figure skating', and it showed me a description and some images. If I didn’t know what figure skating was, or I wanted to know something about it, I could look through this and find out."

"Figure skating is a sport in which individuals, duos, or groups perform on figure skates on ice. The four Olympic disciplines are men's singles, ladies' singles, pair skating, and ice dance," Viktor read the first result aloud. He turned to Yuuri, eyes sparkling. "This is amazing!"

Yuuri smiled. Viktor’s enthusiasm was infectious as it was gorgeous. He scrolled down the page.

"Wait! What did you do?"

Oh. Viktor didn’t know what scrolling was. You can’t scroll down a book page. "Um," Yuuri tried to explain. "Well, in a book, a page is only a certain height, right? You can only put a certain amount of stuff on one book page. But with an internet page, there isn’t a limit to the page length, because a page is just information, it’s not ink on paper."

"You haven’t quite lost me yet, Yuuri," Viktor said when Yuuri looked over.

Yuuri nodded and continued. "The window-" he gestured at his screen "-we use to look at internet pages is still a fixed size, though. So it’s like, um..." Yuuri tried to come up with a good analogy.

"Like feeding a long sheet of paper upwards?" Viktor made a motion with his hands like someone trying to read a scroll. Wait, was that why it was called _scrolling_?

"Yeah. Like that."

"But... the page is just information, so there’s no extra internet paper in the bottom of that metal thing somewhere." Viktor tapped the bottom of Yuuri’s laptop. He sounded like he wasn’t quite sure about that answer.

"No, there isn’t. That’s right." He grabbed Viktor’s hand and held it. "And the metal thing is called a computer."

"Why?"

Yuuri looked up at the ceiling, trying to recall what some technology major had said to him ages ago. "Um, well. It’s a computer because it... computes. Computers think in math, lots of it. Whenever you do anything on a computer it’s doing a bunch of math to figure out what to show you." He looked back at Viktor and shrugged. "If you want to know more I think I still have Nic’s email, they know more about this."

Viktor squeezed Yuuri’s hand but shook his head. "I don’t think I’d understand. Thank you, though." He let go of Yuuri’s hand and grabbed for the laptop, who handed it over skeptically, not knowing what Viktor was intending to do with it.

Somewhat surprisingly, he started typing relatively effortlessly - his only major problem was that he hit the keys with a bit too much force. Fortunately for Yuuri’s computer, he seemed to realize a few seconds in and corrected, looking impressed. He wrote "professional athlete salary" into the search box, then paused. "How do I search?"

Yuuri reached over and pointed to the enter key. "Push this."

Viktor reached over with his left hand and poked the enter key, and the search results came up. Prominent was the figure, "44,680 USD". Yuuri highly doubted that was the appropriate number for even Olympic-level figure skaters, given that it showed a picture of baseball.

But Viktor seemed to have a different problem. The next thing he searched was "USD to rubel conversion", which brought up Chrome’s currency converter. After he ended up with a figure in the hundreds of thousands, he looked to Yuuri, confused. "The first number seemed more reasonable but it was the wrong currency. Has there really been so much inflation in Russia?"

Yuuri leaned over the computer and searched for the inflation rates over the past century, then showed Viktor a steeply inclining graph. "There’s been a lot of inflation everywhere."

Viktor’s eyebrows raised almost as steeply as the graph. "Wow."

"Yeah. So the first number might be a bit more accurate, but there’s another thing. This is the average for... people who play... normal sports? I don’t think the rate for figure skaters is so high."

"Does America not take pride in its skaters?"

"It’s not that, really... though I guess that’s debatable. People just don’t care as much about watching skating, I guess." Yuuri didn’t know what had happened exactly, but he didn’t think anybody could change it. The populous just did what it did, things became fashionable and then they fell out of favor. That was how the world worked.

The clear glass of Viktor’s eyes clouded as he focused on something in the distance, far from the living room and the kitchen and the kitchen window he stared through. Yuuri didn’t ask what he was thinking about, but he sat there for only a few seconds. After that, his expression brightened - but his eyes didn’t clear. "Can we go skating again today?"

Yuuri’s first response was going to be 'no', because he had another commission to start and he wanted to chat with Phichit and he generally had a lot on his plate today, but then he remembered how much _fun_ he’d had the last time they skated together, and so when he spoke at last, he said "Yes."

Viktor’s mouth spread into his trademarked heart-shaped smile. Even so, his eyes were dark and cold - what was he thinking? Enthusiastically, he said the time: "Yuuri, it’s almost noon! We’re going to lunch soon, yes?"

"At 2pm. The restaurant is around half an hour away, so I’ve– _we’ve_ got an hour and a half to go still."

"I keep forgetting your carriages are mechanical and very fast now." Viktor’s finger was pressed against his lips, eyes turned to the side. 

Yuuri smiled. "I don’t think it counts as 'keep forgetting' if you’ve only done it once."

"I’ve only been alive for two days! There’s not a lot I 'keep doing', including breathing!"

"Well I sure as fuck hope you keep breathing." _I like you. You only just got here. Don’t leave._

"Me too," Viktor said, his eyes mirroring Yuuri’s thoughts. 

* * *

Yuuri pulled into the parking lot of their favorite IHOP. He was positive that there was another one that was closer to where he lived nowadays, but this was the IHOP that was the closest to his and Phichit’s old campus, and so they’d slightly appropriated this IHOP by this point and were not intending at any point to go to a different one.

Their favorite IHOP had maroon-and-tan siding with a bluish roof that came close to blending in with the clear afternoon sky. The dark blue ceiling and warm grey walls made the interior feel a lot smaller than it really was, with a coziness that bordered on claustrophobic. There were some high-top tables with bar stools at them in the center of the room, and booths lined the outside. Yuuri dragged Viktor along, knowing the other would be perfectly content to stand around and admire the IHOP for any indefinite period of time if left to his own devices. Yuuri doubted the chain had existed in the early 1900s.

Phichit was already sitting at one of the high-top tables, scrolling on his phone. In the middle of the day, the restaurant was practically empty, so there was no reason not to give a party of three a table big enough to seat six.

"Yuuri!" he exclaimed with a wave as Yuuri walked over with Viktor in tow. "Come, sit. And order your drinks when the server comes back."

Yuuri grabbed a stool on the opposite side from Phichit, and Viktor sat next to him, scooting closer so he could prop his elbow on Yuuri’s shoulder. "Phichit, yes?"

Phichit nodded. He looked just slightly like he was torn between embarrassment and fear.

"Don’t worry about, as Yuuri tells me you said, 'being an overprotective asshole'. Yuuri has told me—and I agree—that if someone gives you food, there is no way to be mad at them anymore."

Phichit laughed, relieved. "That sounds like Yuuri."

The server returned and took their drink orders. Viktor, seemingly having no clue what to order or what anything cost, figured water was a safe option. Yuuri concurred, ordering a water for himself as well. Maybe a cool drink would calm the butterflies in his stomach.

"So, Viktor, was it? Why’d you decide to come to the states?"

Viktor paused, trying to think of an answer other than the one obvious to him. Phichit looked observantly, none the wiser. Yuuri took the split second, like the one immediately preceding a jump he didn’t know if he could land, to collect himself. Then he spoke.

"Actually, Phichit, I have something to tell you."

The room seemed to freeze. At the very least, both of their eyes were on him. Yuuri took a deep breath. He’d been trying to work out how to best talk about this all morning—that was the real reason he’d asked Phichit for five spare hours—and he had come no closer to figuring it out in that time. Mainly because Viktor had been a distraction, but still. It was a hard thing to explain.

"This is a bit... complicated, and not to mention utterly ridiculous, and if I hadn’t watched it happen I wouldn’t believe it myself, so-"

"Yuuri," Phichit said, reaching across the table to put a hand on his shoulder, "What exactly is it?" There was an understanding smile on his lips. Like Yuuri could say he’d found out the moon landing was faked and Phichit would just sit there and listen. This kind of kindness, this was the reason they were best friends. Yuuri took another deep breath.

"Well, it’s complicated, like I said, but... here’s the short version. Two nights ago, I had a really strange dream which inspired me to sculpt a figure, which I did. As I was finishing it my sculpture came to life and pretty immediately collapsed in a heap on the floor. I took him to my living room and he woke up on my couch, knowing his name and mine and basically nothing else. His name, he said at the time though he had no idea what a name actually was, _is Viktor._ I don’t know if that’s a coincidence with the fact that I was going to name the sculpture _Victory_ , or if I’m just going _crazy._ "

Phichit blinked. His hand had dropped from Yuuri’s shoulder and was presently slinking back across the table. Yuuri lowered his hands which had previously been gesturing emphatically and folded them with great poise on the table in front of him. "Is that..." Phichit nodded towards Viktor.

Yuuri nodded once. "There’s more. As we went around grabbing him clothes—he didn’t have any and didn’t quite fit into mine—he started to remember stuff. Confusing, random things, like the fact that he was from St. Petersburg. He can _do_ random things too, like speak fluent Russian and figure skate. For some time we were both incredibly confused—actually we still kind of are—but as he remembered more of whatever previous life he evidently had, we eventually figured out that he was from Russia, in the early 1900s, and that he was a figure skater before he was drafted into the first World War, where he died saving his comrades."

Phichit didn’t speak for a moment. _Oh gods,_ thought Yuuri, _he doesn’t believe me. He thinks I’m pulling some ridiculous prank, despite the fact that I’ve literally never pranked anyone in my life. He thinks I’m being ridiculous. I knew I couldn’t explain it-_

" _That’s_ the short version?!" Phichit asked, laughing.

"A lot happened in the past two days!" Yuuri was defensive before he was relieved, but he was very rapidly both. He started chuckling too. Viktor, next to him, joined in.

"So this is for real then." Phichit pointed at Viktor. "You came to life from a sculpture two days ago."

Viktor nodded very emphatically. At that moment, the server returned to ask if they’d decided on food, and they said yes despite Viktor’s confused expression. Yuuri ordered for him. 

The instant the server walked away, Phichit struck the conversation right back up again. "What on earth was that like? Do you remember?" He leaned forward, propping his elbows up on the table. 

"Yes, actually. I recall a sort of warmth that started at the fingertips of this hand-" he held up his right "-and spread through my body from there. There was also a presence in front of me, that I knew was there despite the fact that I couldn’t see it."

Phichit frowned. "That makes this _more_ confusing, not less. The time-traveling from the 1900s thing I could see, but then, why the amnesia? Why the coming to life from an ice sculpture? It just seems strange."

"That’s a lot of what we’ve been thinking," Viktor said, speaking up at last. It was both useful and mildly annoying that Phichit had come up with the same general conclusion that Yuuri had. "You know, you trust remarkably quickly, Phichit." 

Phichit shrugged. "This is Yuuri we’re talking about. He doesn’t come up with elaborate schemes. If Yuuri says it, and it’s not about himself, it’s probably true."

"Does Yuuri lie about himself often?" Viktor asked, completely candidly.

Phichit laughed. "No, he just has horrible self-perception. Yuuri thinks he’s bad at everything."

Yuuri smiled and shook his head, resting his forehead on his palm. Viktor and Phichit were both so precious. 

"I’ve noticed," Viktor mused, a finger to his lips. "As we skated yesterday, Yuuri looked self-conscious about his skating, which made no sense to me, since it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen."

"I know, right!" Phichit exclaimed, banging his fists on the table. He pointed at Yuuri. "See, now I’ve got a second opinion."

Yuuri smiled and shrugged, acquiescing easily. He didn’t need to argue just because he didn’t believe it. But on the other hand... the fact that _Viktor_ had said it changed things, at least a little bit. He’d always figured Phichit was just complimenting him because Phichit just did that. Phichit was a ray of absolute sunshine. But Viktor was frank, smart, and honest. 

"He moves like his body is creating music," Viktor said. Apparently, they were still ranting about Yuuri.

"That," said Phichit, taking a swig of his iced tea, "is an excellent turn of phrase. Hey, Viktor, have you seen Yuuri’s sculptures?"

Just as Yuuri was saying "no", Viktor said "yes". They looked at each other in confusion.

"I haven’t taken you into my shop," Yuuri said, slowly.

"I know, but you just finished a table, yes? With the initials J+T on it? It has some tiered things on the sides..." Viktor gestured around vaguely.

Yuuri and Phichit both blinked at him.

"No, I don’t know how I knew that," Viktor said, defeated, running his fingers through his fringe. "I remember a number of your other sculptures as well. They’re mostly of muscular men." He looked up to Yuuri. "You did a self-portrait as well, didn’t you?"

"Oh my god, you saw that?!" Yuuri buried his face in his hands. He was going to crawl under a rock and die. It was a technically impressive piece, but he should have known better than to try to do a self-portrait: it made him despise himself even more, and the fact that people recognized that as him felt like a punch to the gut.  _That’s_ _what people see when they look at me every day?_

"I did, but I don’t think it properly represents you." _Huh?_ Yuuri thought. Viktor smiled. "You’re much more beautiful in real life." 

Before Yuuri got a chance to properly blush furiously, the server returned with their food. He stammered through a _thanks_ that turned halfway into an  ありがとう , and began to spread butter across his pancakes with great determination as soon as his plate was in front of him. 

Phichit did not seem amused. "You’re really bad at taking compliments, you know that? I thought it was just me, but you seem to do that with everyone."

Yuuri looked up sheepishly to Phichit’s playful glare. " す \- er, sorry." He leaned back in his chair. 

"I don’t mind," Viktor said, "but it would be nice to know you at least heard me." He gave a little wink, even more playful than Phichit’s silly glare. Yuuri relaxed.

"I heard you. And, um, thanks." He started eating again with significantly less vigor, and so Phichit joined him. Viktor, if doing nothing other than noticing the trend of the group, grabbed his fork too.

They ate mostly in silence for a time, making occasional commentary in various languages about the excellence of IHOP pancakes. Yuuri, who spoke a little bit of Thai, and Phichit, who spoke a little bit of Japanese, could mostly understand each other. Viktor, who spoke neither Thai nor Japanese, just sat there eating pancakes in blissful confusion, muttering occasionally in Russian.

The server returned with their check and Phichit paid it, but didn’t bother getting up to leave. Instead, he turned to Viktor and asked, "What’s your game plan from here, Viktor? Like, what are you going to do with your life now that you’ve got it again?"

"I want to be a figure skater," Viktor said without hesitation. "There’s a lot I’d need to know about how it works now, though. I’m also told it doesn’t pay well here, so that may be a problem."

"Don’t worry about money. Yuuri’s awesome at marketing, and he found himself a few great agencies that give him more than enough high-paying clients. If you want to _skate_ , though, that’s probably more expensive than Yuuri can afford. America doesn’t pay skaters like Russia used to, or even like Russia does now. We pay brutes like football players." 

Viktor turned his eyes to the table, fidgeting with his glass. "I see."

"But!" Phichit exclaimed with a sweeping gesture. "If you’re good, you can do shows and exhibitions. There are a few around here that Yuuri and I used to go to, I still know some people there. A lot of these shows pay their skaters, and even if they don’t, you can use it as a marketing opportunity to get your face out there. How good a performer are you?"

"Excellent," Viktor replied, "though a bit rusty." 

"Can I see you skate?"

"Yuuri and I were planning on going later today, actually. You skate, Phichit?"

Phichit nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah! I haven’t skated with Yuuri in ages, not since he quit. It’d be nice to be on the ice with him again. Reunited as rinkmates once more." 

Yuuri smiled. "Alright, I guess we have a plan. Phichit, want to grab your skates, and we’ll meet at the rink?"

"Sounds great! I’ll see you both there. I’ll bring my music tag, too, so I can see Viktor perform." He gave a wink and stood up.

Yuuri shrugged and stood as well, following Viktor back to their car. Their car? Technically, his car. But... it was their car now.

 

* * *

The ice rink was warm. Yuuri, Phichit, and Viktor all got on at the same time. 

"You need to warm up?" Phichit asked, and Viktor nodded before skating off to do just that. Yuuri considered following him, but decided against it. He stroked vaguely around the outside of the rink with Phichit as they both watched Viktor warm up.

"He really is good," Phichit muttered as Viktor took sweeping cross strokes up and down the ice. 

Yuuri pursed his lips and nodded. 'Good' was a severe understatement. Viktor was brilliant. Gorgeous. Amazing.

They watched as Viktor ran through his jumps. They were better than yesterday, less hesitant. He ran his double jumps and a handful of spins before joining Yuuri and Phichit again.

"Alright!" he said, just slightly out of breath, "You wanted a performance, Phichit?"

Phichit did a little hop as he pulled his music tag—a little plastic fob attached to a bracelet made from looped colored plastic—off his wrist. Yuuri had to push hard to keep up as Phichit skated quickly over to the little closed-off section of boards that contained the music player. He scanned the fob and scrolled through the songs he’d downloaded to the tag using the controls on the music player.

"Viktor," Phichit said, "what kind of song do you skate to, usually?"

Viktor tipped his head to the side. "Classical, usually. Do you have anything like that?"

"I’ve got an aria from an opera," Phichit suggested. "It’s called _Stammi Vicino_. Wanna try it?"

Viktor nodded. "Play the beginning, please. I’d like to hear it before I try to skate to it."

Phichit pressed a few more buttons to select, then play, the song. The speaker announced Phichit’s name in an artificial voice, then there was a moment of silence before the song began.

The beginning of the song was slow, and Viktor swayed back and forth slightly with its rhythm. A tenor’s smooth voice began the melody, singing lyrics in some Romance language that Yuuri didn’t understand. The song had a beautiful lilt to it, it would be easy to dance to.

Just as a few wind instruments were coming into the song, Viktor held up a hand and Phichit swiped his fob against the player again.

"I’m ready," Viktor said.

Phichit and Yuuri both nodded, _alright, go ahead,_ and Viktor skated to center ice. His starting pose was very simple, almost not a starting pose at all. He just stood there, eyes closed, arms at his side, head tipped down. It was almost the same position Viktor had stood in the instant before he’d fallen over in Yuuri’s studio.

The song began again, and Viktor’s first piece of choreography was to simply open his eyes and look up to the ceiling. He took a breath which set his shoulders back, and it was like the first breath he’d ever taken was filling his lungs. It was the simplest possible motion, but it had the most amazing presence. It was impossible to look away.

He lifted an arm and draped it across his forehead, spinning around as he fell to one knee. Then he lifted himself back up in time with that lilt in the song, moving his arms about his head like he was painting the sky above him. 

The tenor entered the song again, soft and slow. Viktor glided forward, reaching out, then turned into a sequence of crossovers. Just as the first verse ended, he did a clean double lutz. It wasn’t technically impressive— two-thirds of the competitive skaters at this rink probably had better jumps than Viktor—but it was absolutely beautiful and perfectly timed. The jump, as a portion of the performance, is simply an accent, and Viktor’s jump suited that purpose. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t a triple or quad; it was captivating enough that it might as well be.

Yuuri, if he was honest, didn’t appreciate the direction that modern figure skating had taken, rewarding higher-caliber jumps to the exclusion of all else. Figure skating had begun as a performance sport, and it still pretended to be one on some level, what with the choreography and the costumes, but it was plain for anyone to see that the judges didn’t actually score presentation on equal footing with technical elements. A clean quad was worth more than the hearts of a million spectators.

The program Viktor skated made Yuuri desperately wish things were different. It was hardly perfectly choreographed; there were places where it was very evident that he was making it up as he went along. Yet, he knew exactly what the music was trying to say—regardless of whether or not he actually spoke whatever language the singer was using—and the music flowed through his body and moved him to its will. As the song built to its climax, Yuuri found himself actually tearing up.

Viktor struck an ending position with his arms crossed above his chest, one toe extended back into the ice, and his eyes turned skyward. The way he had jumped into the position out of a spin had made his fringe fly upward just a little.

Yuuri blinked, wiping his eyes. He looked at Phichit, who was staring shellshocked. Viktor held his pose in silence for a long moment, then bent over, panting and flushed. He pulled himself up and skated over to the others, smiling.

"How was that?"

Phichit pointed at Viktor accusingly. "That was the single best performance I’ve ever seen in my entire life, I am absolutely getting you into the next ice show I can and there is nothing you can do to convince me not to."

Viktor smiled an extremely contented smile. "I’m glad you enjoyed it!"

"I can’t imagine how amazing it would be if you’d had the time to choreograph," Yuuri said quietly. "I actually cried."

Phichit turned to Yuuri. "Really??"

Yuuri nodded, smiling down at the ice. His chest still felt warm and tight. "I agree with Phichit, Viktor, you need to perform this." Yuuri looked up at Viktor, where he was surprised to see an expression that made it look like Viktor would be the next one crying. His brows were furrowed, his cheeks flushed, the edges of his smile twitched slightly.

When Viktor spoke, he did so quietly, almost reverently. "Thank you, Yuuri. That... means a lot."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Japanese in this chapter:  
> ありがとう = "arigatō", "thank you"  
> Yuuri starts to say すみません = "sumimasen", "sorry".

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading guys! Next chapter up very soon, and as always, see you next level! <3


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